


Live a Life Less Ordinary [With Me]

by Nerissa



Category: Original Work
Genre: Childhood Sweethearts, F/F, Secret Identity, Superheroes, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-23 23:22:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9686741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nerissa/pseuds/Nerissa
Summary: Of course Lilah had superpowers. That made perfect sense, since as far as Shae could tell Lilah seemedbornto be extraordinary. But nobody ever expected Shae to have them too.Eventually that came in handy.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brachylagus_fandom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brachylagus_fandom/gifts).



Shae worried. She always had. Super powers or not, she couldn’t help it (and Shae had got hers late, too; not that it should make a difference, but when you got your powers late sometimes you got a little jumpier than people who came into theirs on schedule, around puberty).

She didn’t worry so much for herself as she did for Lilah. Lilah got her powers right on time, but even if she’d never got them at all, Shae knew she’d have been like this. Bold, reckless, and too inclined to risk herself over things Shae thought were properly insignificant.

So when Lilah was out this late, Shae worried.

When Lilah was out this late for That Part of her life, Shae worried even more.

And when Lilah came through the door at last, the worry didn’t ease, because she was holding herself all wrong and the bag that had the Crimson Flame leotard crumpled up inside it was hanging from the crook of her elbow, bumping along the floor like even a bit of a spandex and a laptop were too heavy to handle.

Shae was across the room in a flash, hands under Lilah’s elbows, her worry hardening into a living twist at the pit of her stomach.

“Lilah . . .”

“I’m fine,” said Lilah.

“Liar,” Shae snarled, utterly fierce, utterly unlike herself. Lilah smiled.

“You’re so mean to me, baby,” she sighed, and the lie, the joke, whatever she meant it to be—a comfort to Shae, albeit a false one—fell far too flat.

“Come on.” Shae firmed her support under Lilah’s arms. “let’s have a look.”

And if she hadn’t known before how bad it was, she’d have known the moment Lilah flinched at her touch before she said yes.

 

* * *

 

Lilah was always the risk-taker, right from the start. She was the reason they were first caught together. Not, Shae had reasoned, that it wouldn’t have happened eventually anyway. When you’d been together since middle school—since even before you had fully got your powers, never mind worked out what your alter ego was going to be—there was almost no avoiding it.

But the first time they were caught was so _soon._ They hadn’t been dating a month. And yes, that time was entirely Lilah’s fault, but it had never occurred to Shae to blame her for it.

Shae was thirteen, slight and spindly, brown all over and depressingly forgettable. She had longed, if not for height, at least for a shape more suited to a teenaged girl, and maybe a superpower as well. Nothing major; she wasn’t greedy. Not flight or mind reading or anything like that. But speed, maybe, or X Ray vision. Or at least for hair that didn’t force her own hats off her head the moment they were jammed into place.

Lilah, already curvier, taller, with creamy skin and smooth jet black hair, so much impossibly _more_ in every respect, seemed an incredible mismatch, a happy accident that Shae planned to enjoy for as long as it took Lilah to figure out she’d accidentally chosen to date somebody infinitely beneath her. But instead of waking to her mistake, Lilah had asked Shae to meet her in an empty Science lab on their three-week anniversary. Then she had crowded Shae against the counter, staring down at her like she had never seen anything so extraordinary. Shae was conscious, not of imminent rejection, but of something hungry sparking just below the surface.

“Wanna see some magic?” Lilah whispered.

It could only mean she’d got her powers. Shae had always figured Lilah would have powers; the odds when you had non-powered parents were pretty average for most kids, but something about Lilah just seemed destined for superherodom. Everything about Shae stood in contrast to Lilah: where Lilah was lush and bold and reckless, Shae was small, quiet, desperately unsure of herself. But she was sure of what she felt when Lilah looked down at her that way, hot and delicious, and she was sure there were some moments in life when the risk of a yes was worth infinitely more than the safety of a no.

“Okay, sure.”

Instead of showing off flight or X Ray vision or super strength, Lilah kissed her.

That was, Shae thought, infinitely better than X Ray vision.

Shae had gone up on her toes, instinctively chasing the kiss, when the door to the lab banged open. Mrs. Ngobe gaped at them from the middle of her fifth-period sixth-grade Science class, and the spell was broken.

“Um,” said Shae.

“Hi,” said Lilah, and giggled.

“Ooh,” said Grade 6.

Lilah, still smiling, bold and lazy, only not lazy, not really, flicked her thumb and forefinger together. The powers Shae had been anticipating had come after all: sparks and smoke—Shae couldn’t work out where they were coming from—fizzed and fumed all around them, and the sprinkler system spat to life.

Under the cover of cascading water, Lilah caught Shae’s hand in hers and pulled her from the room. They fled together, soaked, laughing, barrelling through the halls until they agreed it was safe to stop.

 

* * *

 

So of course even when they were grownups it would be Lilah who came home banged up from battle, and of course it would be Shae who had to clean it up, because wasn’t that just the way it was? But there was no rule, Shae thought, that said she had to like it.

“Here, sit down.” Shae manoeuvered Lilah onto the lip of the bathtub and helped her off with her shirt. When she saw the skin underneath, she sucked in her breath in a soft, frightened hiss. Then, abruptly, she was so angry she forgot to be scared.

“What the hell happened to you?”

Lilah shook her head bitterly.

“It was the stupid Overlord again.”

The Overlord was the closest thing Lilah had to a nemesis. Shae didn’t have a nemesis, of course; she wasn’t important enough. But Lilah had the Overlord and his twitchy little sidekick, the Underling, and she was usually more annoyed by them than anything else. But tonight, something had changed.

“What happened?” Shae fussed. Lilah didn’t answer right away.

“Matthew isn’t in, is he?” she wheezed, and Shae, riffling through their medicine cupboard, assured Lilah that their tenant was working late.

“What happened?”

“Just so stupid,” Lilah grunted, as Shae fetched out three pots, a tube of salve and a roll of bandage, and rushed back to her side. “Didn’t see the oil drums. Whole place went up like a bomb, and my mask . . . I don’t know. I felt it slip. I think I got it back on before anyone got a look at my face, but . . . damn it. I thought the fabric wasn’t supposed to do that in the heat. I’m going to have to talk to—”

“You aren’t talking to anyone tonight,” Shae said firmly. “You’re going to let me clean those burns and put you to bed.”

“Take me to bed?” Lilah asked, the corner of her mouth curling up. Shae shook her head, smiling back in spite of herself.

“You’re impossible.”

Lilah shrugged, then winced as the skin across her back, heat-scorched, tugged unpleasantly tight.

“All right,” she said, “have it your way. Put me to bed.”

 

* * *

 

Not that it was always Shae looking after Lilah. It was just, Shae more often had the opportunity to. Lilah took her chances where she found them, but they were smaller moments, little things, until their senior year when Shae’s powers had come in and surprised everybody, including her parents.

“I mean,” her mother said, not even bothering to make it sound better than it was, “we just always thought you were so _ordinary_ , dear.”

So had Shae, but somehow knowing her mother felt it too had stung, and she’d run away to Lilah’s to vent about it.

Lilah’s hand had trailed lazy, fond circles across Shae’s back as Shae spilled a few insecurities old and new into her lap, not reassuring, not ignoring, just . . . listening. It wasn’t Lilah’s strong suit, listening, which made it one of the most incredible things she had ever done. When Shae finally stopped to catch her breath and cry a little, Lilah brushed the cloud of soft, dark hair back from Shae’s face and said, “you’ve never been ordinary to me. You know that, right?”

It was beyond the right thing to say. It was the most perfect, lovely thing anybody had ever said. Shae dragged Lilah’s face down to hers, kissing her, clumsy in gratitude and adoration. Somehow her hand found its way under Lilah’s shirt, and Lilah’s soft, pleasured gasp into Shae’s mouth emboldened her further.

She lifted Lilah’s shirt over her head, with Lilah’s very enthusiastic help. Something bold and confident, entirely new, was coursing through Shae. Was this, she wondered, what it felt like to be Lilah? So completely sure of what you wanted and how to get it?

She resolved to ask when Lilah’s tongue wasn’t doing that most fantastic thing to—

“Oh!”

It was the voice, not the sound of the door, that knocked them apart. Lilah looked up over the back of the couch, glaring, then registering, belatedly, their mutual state of undress.

“Oh my God, Bryce!” she stormed. “You are the most useless—get OUT!”

“Well lock the damn door next time!” Bryce yelled, then dodged back to safety on the other side when Lilah flung a sparking fireball at his head.

“Sorry,” Lilah sighed, and Shae, whose mood had been utterly shattered by the untimely appearance of her girlfriend’s brother, tugged a handy blanket over her shoulders and shrugged sheepishly.

“Probably wasn’t gonna fix anything, anyway.”

“Wasn’t supposed to fix anything,” Lilah said calmly. She ran her hand over Shae’s hair, watching it spring up gently in the wake of her palm. “Was just supposed to feel good. You know?”

Shae nodded, understanding.

“Still,” Lilah made no move to reach for her shirt, “you got your powers. That’s pretty cool. Can I see?”

So Shae, blushing, proud, had shown Lilah the way she could raise a windstorm, direct the current, and make the air do generally whatever she wanted it to.

“Figures,” Lilah decided. “You’d be the wind . . .” She set a spark hovering over her palm, and smiled as Shae’s timid, soft puff of oxygen kindled it to full flame. “You do that to me every day.”

This time, they locked the door.

 

* * *

 

They probably shouldn’t have lasted. Not that Shae still thought of herself the way she had when she was little, but even so, the odds of staying with your first girlfriend all the way into adulthood? Well, they weren’t great. But somehow, they’d stuck it out. They were adults, together. They had actual city contracts and everything, fully accredited superheroes, and Lilah was even on a promotional track to work for the state.

“Government work,” she’d groused, when Shae congratulated her. “Do I look like a civil servant to you?”

Shae hadn’t known what to say to that, but of course Lilah settled in, and it was all right. They bought a townhouse together, which they were able to afford through a combination of judicious accounting and the acquisition of a grad student who rented a room and spent more time in the lab than he did in the house.

Shae had started to think about proposing. Then she wondered how that would even work. Did they exchange rings? How could you propose as a surprise, though, and still exchange rings? Maybe you talked about it first and picked a date to trade. Or maybe there didn’t have to be a ring, maybe you just sort of winked and agreed and went on your way. Although, Shae wanted Lilah to have a ring. Her fingers were long and beautiful, and she took scrupulous care of her nails. The fire refined them, bright and hard as diamonds, and Shae could too easily imagine a ruby the colour of flame winking on the third finger of Lilah’s hand.

All thought of proposals, though, was chased from Shae’s head the night Lilah came home from a near miss with the Overlord, and let Shae put her to bed.

Lilah fell asleep almost immediately, burns coated with laboratory-supplied salve, state-sanctioned locks humming on their window, but Shae hovered a few minutes even after her breathing evened out, watching carefully. She tore herself away only when the front door opened, pausing to set the security system to full charge. Once the bedroom door was primed like the windows, and the whole system went live, she charged down the hall to head Matthew off. She didn’t consider how she must look after a prolonged stint of nerve-wracked nursing until the weird look Matthew gave her drove home how frazzled she must appear.

“Um, hi,” she said, belatedly thinking it mightn’t have been the best idea to go charging at him, “sorry, I . . . long night. How was studying?”

“It—” he looked down at the messenger bag slung over his shoulder. “It was fine. You okay? You look a little . . . off.”

“Yeah, no, yeah,” Shae fumbled her cloud of hair back, struggling to remember how to appear ordinary. “But Lilah had a little scare. Car accident. Nothing major. But she’s really shook. So am I, to be honest.”

Matthew’s odd expression mellowed somewhat.

“No way. You’re sure she’s fine? She been to the hospital?”

“No, it . . . maybe tomorrow. She’s resting. I just came out here to, um, ask you to let her rest.”

“No, sure, that’s fine,” Matthew nodded. He looked almost normal again. Shae’s muscles eased, unclenching, smoothing into . . . she frowned.

“Why do you smell like smoke?”

“Oh!” now it was Matthew’s turn to frown. “It was the stupidest damn thing, I was coming back from the library, and just my luck, Crimson Flame and the Overlord were having some kind of firefight right off the main road. Traffic backed up for six blocks—is that where Lilah got hit? Because that was a clusterfuck right there. You know the city’s gonna be cleaning that up for days.”

“Oh, right,” Shae nodded. “Yeah, that was definitely where she got hurt. I’m . . .” and this was the easiest thing she’d said all night, “I’m really glad you’re okay.”

“Thanks.” Matthew glanced down the hall toward Lilah’s closed door. “Lilah, too.”

Shae nodded feelingly. “Yeah. Me, too.”

She waited.

Matthew seemed to be waiting too, which was . . . well that was weird, is what it was. He looked back down the hall again, like he wasn’t sure of the way to his own room.

“She’s asleep?”

Shae nodded. Something cold was snaking up the back of her neck. Which was ridiculous, of course, this was finally the time to relax. Lilah was resting. The doors and windows to their room were among the most secure entry points in the whole city. Lilah was safe. She would be fine. And if, in the morning, Shae thought she was anything worse than significantly improved, she would be the one who made sure Lilah went to the hospital.

It was all okay.

Matthew fiddled with the strap of his messenger bag.

“Um,” he said, “there’s no real easy way to say this, I guess.”

Shae felt the weight of her fatigue lurking behind the panic that had kept it at bay all night. She forced it back a little longer, dredging up irritation to stave off the looming need to join Lilah in bed and let the night swallow her.

“Say what, Matthew?”

He shook his head, sighed, and dug into the bag.

“Never mind,” he said. “I’ll tell you later.”

Then there was a hum, a high-pitched metallic whine, and a blinding flash of light.

And the night swallowed her up, after all.

 

* * *

 

Shae had been knocked out before. Once at the dentist, and once by a softball when she was twelve. Neither time had been anything like this. This time it was like somebody drove a spike right between her eyes and tapped it with a tuning fork.

She woke to a piercing headache and the sound of ringing in her ears. She didn’t even want to risk shaking her head to clear it, in case she was sick to her stomach. Instead she breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth, and focused on the passage of air. In, out. In, out. In—

“Oh good, you’re awake.” Matthew bent down to squint into her face, and Shae squinted back, fighting nausea. “That thing still has some bugs. Glad you’re . . . y’know. Still you.”

The implications of that statement took a moment to sink in. Once they did, nausea was eclipsed by pure rage.

“You mean it could have killed me?” she shrieked. The headache vanished in the wake of her anger. “What the hell, Matthew?! What are you even doing with—what _was_ that thing?”

“Um, just something I’ve been working on the past couple months.” He scuffed his heel on the floor. “A kind of scrambler. It works best at close range. My boss wants me to expand it, but the frequency gets jumbled when I try. It’s why I’ve been out so late; I’ve been working on improving it.”

Shae stumbled mentally over these new pieces of information, then nudged them carefully into shape.

“You . . . you’re a supervillain? Or,” because no, Matthew was not super-anything material, “what, a mad scientist? Or—no, wait,” she could have kicked herself for not seeing it sooner; would have kicked herself for sure, if only her wrists and ankles weren’t secured to a heavy metal chair with zip ties, “you’re the Underling, aren’t you?”

Matthew looked hurt.

“Why do you go right to the Underling? Did it ever occur to you I could be the Overlord?”

Of all the ridiculous—

“If you were the Overlord,” Shae said, conscious of exaggerated patience, “you wouldn’t have lasted one round with—” But she stopped herself from using either name, suddenly uncertain. Matthew’s wounded feelings sank below the mask of a smug grin.

“With who?” he prompted. “Crimson Flame? Or did you mean Lilah? They’re the same person, aren’t they?”

Shae scowled up at Matthew and held her tongue.

“Oh come on,” he sighed. “We saw her, you know. Her cowl slipped. Pretty careless of her.”

It might have been, but Shae wasn’t about to say so to their tenant before she said it to Lilah. She put her chin up and scowled at him.

“You couldn’t even last one round with _me_. No way could you ever take on Lilah.”

“Ordinarily, maybe not,” he allowed. His gaze strayed over her limbs, all four neatly pinioned by his efforts while she was still unconscious. “But this is the kind of opportunity that levels most playing fields. Not one I was expecting, I’ll admit, but definitely not one my boss would want me to pass up.”

Speaking of . . . Shae twisted her neck, looking around. They were not on the main level any more. They were in Matthew’s room, the very upper storey of the townhouse, an attic space remade into a bachelor apartment. He’d hadn’t even taken her out of the house; he’d just brought her upstairs.

“Where are you keeping him, in your closet?”

“He’s on his way.” Matthew fished his phone out of a back pocket and checked the time. “You’ve been out about twenty minutes. First I thought I’d take care of you and Lilah together, but I couldn’t get through that bedroom door. What have you got it wired with, anyway?”

Shae didn’t answer. She knew it would look like defiance, but truthfully, she didn’t know. The city arranged for things like that, their security and health care and all the gadgets and masks: all of it.

A fresh burst of angry frustration hit Shae. They wouldn’t even be in this mess if it weren’t for Lilah’s mask. If she got out of this—when she got out of this—she’d make it her top priority to track down whoever had been responsible for that malfunction. Nobody got to risk Lilah’s safety that way. Not as long as she had anything to say about it.

“So what now?” she asked, and surprised even herself by how bored she sounded. “Lilah’s still asleep, I’m assuming. And it looks like your boss doesn’t exactly put top priority on your texts, or else why isn’t he here? Don’t tell me,” because she was starting to get a pretty good guess, “you didn’t actually tell him you figured out who Crimson Flame was. You just said something vague and important sounding. Like, guess what. Or, big news, text me back. Am I right?”

She grinned at the expression on his face. Oh, she was _so_ right.

“You think—” he began, leaning forward. Then the creak of the step beyond his door stole his attention away.

Shae’s stomach curled up small and cold. It was pretty unlikely the Overlord did stairs.

“Li—”

Matthew’s hand came crushing down on the lower half of her face faster than she’d ever imagined anyone could move. Maybe he had a little something of his own after all, then? Some kind of half-assed super speed? She didn’t get to wonder about it too long, though, because Lilah’s voice drifted up to meet her, lazy, amused, and covering over everything Shae knew she’d never show.

“So. We need to come up with a better background check, clearly, since we actually rented out our top floor to my arch nemesis. Or at least,” she strolled into the room, coming to a halt just inside the door, “his secretary.”

Matthew’s rage threaded his fingers tight against Shae’s face, though there was no need anymore, not now that Lilah knew they were here. It was pure retaliation.

“I am NOT his secretary!”

“No?” Lilah crossed her arms, unimpressed. “Okay, maybe not. I mean, if you were his secretary and you called him, I bet he’d actually be here by now.”

Matthew turned a mottled red-and-purple. He dropped his hand and started forward, then thought better of it when Lilah’s hand started up, sparking a clear, white flame.

“Nuh-uh,” he shook his head, darting back behind Shae’s chair. “Not this time. You can fling those around in warehouses, out by the lake, even in the city, but I don’t think you’ll be throwing them in this direction.”

He wrapped his hand under Shae’s jaw to accentuate his point. “You don’t want to take that risk.”

Lilah’s expression became extraordinarily blank, like everything she most wanted to show had been crammed, fast and fierce, down into the very depths of her. She took a very long moment to choose her next words.

“Your boss doesn’t know where you are.”

“He will soon.”

“When?” Lilah said airily. “When he’s finally bored enough to take your call? If that’s our timeline, we could be here all night.”

“You’d better hope we’re not!” Matthew warned. He dragged up on Shae’s neck a little, and Shae, her face tipped up to the ceiling, could just barely glimpse the way Lilah’s feet settled deeper into her stance, legs apart, arms at her sides.

_In through the nose. Out through the mouth._

“Do you even have any powers?” Lilah asked, almost pityingly. “I bet you don’t. Or is it that little half-power type of thing? You know, where you have like, super smell. Or a really long tongue. Or you can just speed walk a little faster than the rest of us. That’s it, isn’t it?” She saw what Shae felt: the agitated tension rolling through Matthew. “It’s something really pathetic.”

“Yeah?” he panted. “Well, what the hell kind of superhero loses her own damn mask? We had no idea who you were! Not until I saw your face. And when the Overlord finds out I’ve found you out, he’ll—”

“What, _respect_ you? Seriously? Man, if he doesn’t respect you now, he never will. And,” with sudden, naked contempt, “I have to say I’m with him there.”

She was trying to goad him into rushing her again. Lilah’s intentions were as transparent to Shae as if she’d voiced them aloud. The Overlord did not know who she was or where to find her, so it had become imperative to deal with Matthew before further communication could be established.

Which meant that sitting there meek and mild was thoroughly played out.

“It’s okay, Lilah,” Shae said. “I can take it from here.” Matthew’s grip on her throat radiated his confusion, but she ignored it. Lilah looked torn between acquiescence and the desire to act.

“Are you sure?”

“Yup.” Shae would have nodded, but Matthew’s hand was closing tighter. The violence of his grip lit an angry heat deep inside her. “I got this.”

The funnel of air whistled in out of nowhere. One minute Matthew had Shae by the neck; the next, he was being blown around the room like so much forgotten trash. He was dragged over his desk, sending everything arranged on it flying. He cracked his head on the ceiling, then on the wall, and then finally a sheet of wind, solid as a granite block, pinned him upside down to the ceiling. Shae watched with unconcealed satisfaction as his cheeks bulged and flapped like he’d just stuck his mouth over the end of a leaf blower.

“What a surprisingly insufferable prick.”

Lilah was at her side in an instant, melting the joins of the zip ties and frowning at the thin line across each of Shae’s wrists.

“I should light him up right now,” she muttered.

“No, you should be in bed. I’m just sorry you had to get up for this. You need your rest.”

“Well you might have needed me,” Lilah argued. “Plus, he left the most arrogant little ransom note downstairs. I ended up burning the thing. So smug. And I’m _glad_ I came upstairs 'cause I sure as hell didn’t know if the Overlord was on his way, did you?”

“Not for sure,” Shae admitted. “But I could have handled him too. Just ‘cause I can’t throw fireballs doesn’t mean I’m completely helpless.”

“No, you’re definitely not that.”

They both looked up at the ceiling where Matthew was turning greeny-grey around the edges with the wind choking off his every effort to communicate.

“I’ll call central holding,” Lilah offered. “They’ll make sure he’s put away right. Might even be able to trace his last message to the Overlord and run him to ground.”

“And then you’ll rest.” Shae’s tone brooked no argument. Lilah’s face lit up appreciatively.

“Mmm, I love it when you’re bossy,” she purred. Shae rolled her eyes.

“ _Lilah_!”

“All right,” Lilah laughed, “all right. Then I’ll rest.” She wound her fingers through her girlfriend’s, smiling down at her in naked gratitude and relief.

“We both will.”

Yes, Shae thought, they both would. They needed their rest; Lilah to heal, and Shae because . . . well, because in the morning, she was _definitely_ shopping for a ring.

**Author's Note:**

> I fell completely in love with your prompt as soon as I saw it, and I couldn't resist a treat. I hope you enjoyed!


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